Rivers of Rhythm

The National Museum of African American Music, breaking ground in Nashville in 2018, will honor the work and legacy of African American musicians and their profound impact on American music. With the museum’s completion several years away, NMAAM approached us with a desire to create something that would generate buzz and interest for the museum in the interim, as well as help attract sponsors. Our team planned, designed, and built a music discovery application that connects artists through their influencers and those they influenced, creating a unique digital experience for music lovers to discover new artists from the past and present.

The Design

As a non-profit, we must develop presentations that allow donors, or potential donors, to easily see themselves associated with or part of our organization. The InVision prototype provided us with just that, enabling us to land our presenting sponsor with a very short sales cycle.

Henry HicksPresident & CEO, NMAAM

The Tech

Prototype

Our team recommended starting by creating a clickable prototype of the application in InVision. This prototype allowed NMAAM the ability to share the experience of the application with potential donors quicker and with a smaller investment than beginning with the full application build. The prototype was extremely successful, as it encouraged Belmont University to partner on this project and donate the funds to help bring the full application to life.

Angular

The design of the application was vital to the client, and thus we needed a technology that could be as flexible as possible. Angular allowed our team to develop in tandem, giving the frontend team the ability to create the components markup while the backend developers began writing the logic as the components were delivered. This enabled our team to seamlessly merge work without being in each other's way.

Third-party integrations

This product required several third-party integrations, the most significant of which was the use of Rovi, a rich musical database. Rovi’s API was utilized to pull in data about each artist, including pictures, biographical information, albums, songs, influencers, and followers. Our developers worked to ensure Rovi’s data was seamlessly populating in the application as well as presented as elegantly as possible.

The Results

The success of the prototype gave our team the ability to develop the full application and see the digital experience come to life. The utilization of third-party integrations such as Rovi, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and Amazon affiliates were essential to not only giving the application robust data and information, but also kept the experience as automated as possible, minimizing manual work for the client on the backend. While the museum will not open its doors until 2018, Rivers of Rhythm allows users around the globe to experience the interconnectedness of artists from all backgrounds and the influence that music has on our lives, encouraging excitement for the soon to open museum.